Here s a headline meant to spur unnecessary fear: Sudden death during sports more common among men. This headline appeared in Reuters and the article claims that men who engage in recreational sports are 20 times more likely to die from a sudden heart problem than female recreational athletes.
Dr. Eloi Marijon from the Paris Cardiovascular Research Center at Georges Pompidou European Hospital, and colleagues, looked at sudden deaths from sports in French adults between the years of 2005 and 2010. They documented 775 sports-related deaths. Among those, 42 were women. That translates to a rate of one death for every 2 million female athletes as compared to a rate of one death for every 100,000 male athletes.
Authors of the study believe that there are two possible explanations for their results. One is that men may tend to start exercising too vigorously instead of building up slowly. The other is that men are more likely to have buildups and blockages in their arteries which would put them at greater risk for cardiac arrest.
ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross reacts to these numbers. According to the numbers this may be technically true, but with such small numbers, this study is just going to generate unnecessary fear. There s no doubting that sudden death from sports is more common in men than in women, and the two explanations the authors provide are very logical. But the real message here is this: sudden death among recreational athletes, male and female, is strikingly uncommon, one might say rare. Recreational athletes should not use this study as a reason to stop participating in these sports. Most likely, those cases of sudden death had a pre-existing condition and their cases cannot be generalized to the population as a whole.